I have a new iMac arriving soon to replace my long in the tooth Mac Pro which dates from 2006.
I specced it quite highly - it has the i7 3.4 chip, 16Gb of RAM, 3Tb Fusion Drive. I left the standard video card on the grounds that (a) it's way faster than the one I have now anyway and that one has never been a source of issues, (b) I do not really play games or render video on it and (c) the $250 would more than pay for another 16Gb of RAM to give me the 32Gb which is maximum and would be more likely to be useful for 2D images.
However with the single 3Tb Fusion Drive I am now not able to do what I presently do and have 4 drives in the Mac Pro with a Vault on 3 of them and a further vault on my Drobo as well as a Backblaze backup.
My Drobo is old and connects using FW800 or USB2 (there was an accessory that allowed you to connect it to a network using Ethernet but I don't know if that is still made).
A Thunderbolt storage unit is the obvious answer but very expensive (not too far short of 50% of the cost of the computer!) and limited in choice too here in NZ.
Does anyone have any other ideas how to spread the risk of drive failure a bit?
Hi Marcus,
I also maxed out an i7 here in Australia with a 768GB SSD and 32GB ram,
Even if I got the 3TB deal, I would be short of memory so I preferred the “need for speed” option
I only have a 12mp camera and am coping with 6TB and a stack of DVD’s but if I move to a 36mp camera in the new year, I will need a whole lot more storage
One of my friends in Canada just got a 36mp D800 and is now storing all his images on line
Not sure of the costs but that is another option
I will still with the every increasing external HDD option until it becomes too expensive
I could find out the cost of my friends online option If you want
Edit: Just realised I have 10TB! In saying that, a lot of those images are also on DVD, just copied them for fast access
….Gary
How can this be? The highest iMac I can find on the US and Canadian stores is an i5 3.2 processor. I’ve been waiting for an upgrade for months. I thought there WASN’T an i7 iMac. Am I wrong? Can you point me to one?
Thanks,
Judy
Hi Judy,
Your in luck, its all good, you can find it here,
The i5 is the highest model shown but when you click select, you then have the option for all the upgrades, including i7, 32GB ram and 2GB graphics card etchttp://store.apple.com/us/configure/MD096LL/A?
Basically just click on select, then you test how much slack is on that Credit Card, (smile)
Regards,
Gary
I can only assume your Canadian friend has fibre!
I am on copper ADSL and likely to remain so for at least another 5 years. Our download speed is OK - around 12.6 MBPS but our upload speed is not even 1 mbps!
Storing terabytes of images using that just won’t work I don’t think. We also have relatively low monthly data caps in NZ.
I suppose a Thunderbolt RAID or Drobo Mini is going to be the best idea.
Sorry to hear that Marcus, anyway, who’s to say that option is really safe?
I haven’t made money since film days so not a major concern for me, except for Turbo, USB 3 external drives are getting bigger and cheaper, If one dies, I have a “clone”, just hope 2 don’t go together
….Gary
I am thinking that the Drobo Mini might just be the answer.